Ryan rips Clinton as he avoids mention of Trump

Associated Press

Published 1:35 pm, Friday, October 14, 2016

MADISON, Wis. — House Speaker Paul Ryan, under siege from fellow Republicans for his unwillingness to help Donald Trump, accused Democrat Hillary Clinton and liberals on Friday of seeking to impose “a gloom and a grayness” on America and pursuing a government-heavy agenda for elites.

“In the America they want, the driving force is the state,” Ryan said in remarks to college Republicans in his home state. “It is a place where government is taken away from the people, and we are ruled by our betters, by a cold and unfeeling bureaucracy that replaces original thinking.”

Ryan’s comments were his first significant public statements since he privately told GOP colleagues on Monday that he would no longer defend or campaign for his party’s presidential nominee. That came after last week’s release of a 2005 video showing Trump boasting about forcing sexual contact with women.

Ryan rescinded an invitation for Trump to appear at a Wisconsin political event last weekend, though he has not dropped support for Trump. Trump has responded with tweets suggesting a sinister plot and calling Ryan ineffective, highlighting an extraordinary schism between the top GOP elected official and the party’s White House candidate.

While Ryan never mentioned Trump’s name Friday — a common tactic for many congressional Republicans this campaign season — he tore into Clinton, who polls show has surged ahead in the race for the White House.

“When Hillary Clinton says we are ‘stronger together,’ what she means is we are stronger if we are all subject to the state,” Ryan said. “What she means is we are stronger if we give up our ties of responsibility to one another and hand all of that over to government.”

Ryan referred repeatedly to “liberal progressivism” as a failed philosophy that “demands conformity and sameness” and has produced fewer jobs, unabated poverty, excessive regulations and an oversize government.

“They want an America that is ordinary. There’s kind of a gloom and a grayness to things,” he said.

Ryan told his fellow House Republicans on Monday that he will spend the remaining weeks until the Nov. 8 elections campaigning to help them keep control of the chamber.

The GOP seems likely to retain its House majority, but Democrats’ hopes for prevailing have grown recently days amid a string of bad days for Trump.

On Friday, Ryan said he raised around $15 million in July through September this year for House Republicans. His Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, said she raised about $35 million for her party’s House candidates during those same three months.

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